What do assault weapons do to the bodies of children? Do we want to know? Media pundits ponder whether showing more gruesome images might finally change public policy on the right to bear arms. Cognizant of another time a child’s body became an icon, we turned to Jessie Jaynes-Diming, a Civil Rights tour guide and Emmett Till Memorial Commission member, for her thoughts on Uvalde, Texas. We asked her to contextualize the murder of 14-year-old Till — and his mother Mamie Till’s decision to display his mutilated corpse in an open-casket funeral — to glean some perspective.
